Fixed and mobile computer-based information systems are becoming cheaper, more rugged, and increasingly networked. As a result, technological advances are changing the way businesses collect, analyze, and manage information. For example, certain processes and certain types of equipment and instrumentation are becoming more automatic in nature, especially with regard to the capture and manipulation of data and the conversion of data into useful information.
The area of field service operations is an example of an area that is experiencing growth in information technology. Field service operations may be any operation in which companies dispatch technicians and/or other staff to remote locations in order to perform certain activities, for example, installations, services and/or repairs. Field service operations may exist in industries, such as, but not limited to, network installations, utility installations, security systems, construction, medical equipment, heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) and the like.
An example of a field service operation in the construction industry is a so-called “locate and marking operation,” also commonly referred to more simply as a “locate operation” (or sometimes merely as “a locate”). In a typical locate operation, a locate technician visits a work site in which there is a plan to disturb the ground (e.g., excavate, dig one or more holes and/or trenches, bore, etc.) so as to determine a presence or an absence of one or more underground facilities (such as various types of utility cables and pipes) in a dig area to be excavated or disturbed at the work site.
In many states, an excavator who plans to disturb ground at a work site is required by law to notify any potentially affected underground facility owners prior to undertaking an excavation activity. Advanced notice of excavation activities may be provided by an excavator (or another party) by contacting a “one-call center.” One-call centers typically are operated by a consortium of underground facility owners for the purposes of receiving excavation notices and in turn notifying facility owners and/or their agents of a plan to excavate. As part of an advanced notification, excavators typically provide to the one-call center various information relating to the planned activity, including a description of the dig area to be excavated or otherwise disturbed.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example in which a locate operation is initiated as a result of an excavator 110 providing an excavation notice to a one-call center 120. An excavation notice also is commonly referred to as a “locate request,” and may be provided by the excavator to the one-call center via an electronic mail message, information entry via a website maintained by the one-call center, or a telephone conversation between the excavator and a human operator at the one-call center. The locate request may include an address or some other location-related information describing the geographic location of a work site at which the excavation is to be performed, as well as a description of the dig area (e.g., a text description), such as its location relative to certain landmarks and/or its approximate dimensions, within which there is a plan to disturb the ground.
Based on this information, the one-call center identifies certain underground facilities that may be affected by the proposed excavation at the work site. For example, one-call centers generally have access to various existing maps of underground facilities in their jurisdiction, referred to as “facilities maps.” Facilities maps typically are provided by underground facilities owners within the jurisdiction and show, for respective different utility types, where underground facilities purportedly may be found relative to some geographic reference frame or coordinate system (e.g., a grid, a street or property map, GPS latitude and longitude coordinates, etc.).
Most often, using such facilities maps, a one-call center identifies a significant buffer zone around an identified work site (i.e., based on the address or location information provided by an excavator in the locate request), so as to make an over-inclusive identification of underground utilities that are implicated by the proposed excavation (e.g., to err on the side of caution). This practice of creating a buffer zone around an identified work site with reference to one or more facilities maps commonly is referred to as generating a “polygon” or “polygon map.” Based on these generally over-inclusive polygons (and in some instances significantly over-inclusive polygons), the one-call center identifies all of the underground facilities that may fall within the polygon so as to notify the corresponding facility owners and/or their agents of the proposed excavation. Again, it should be appreciated that polygons or polygon maps utilized by one-call centers for this purpose typically embrace a geographic area that includes but goes well beyond the actual work site, and in many cases the geographic area enclosed by a given polygon is significantly larger than the actual dig area in which excavation or other similar activities are planned.
Once facilities implicated by the locate request are identified by a one-call center (e.g., via the polygon process), the one-call center generates a “locate request ticket” (also known as a “locate ticket,” or simply a “ticket”). The locate request ticket typically identifies the work site of the proposed excavation and a description of the dig area, typically lists on the ticket all of the underground facilities implicated by the proposed excavation (e.g., by providing a member code for the facility owner of an underground facility that falls within a given polygon), and may also include various other information relevant to the proposed excavation (e.g., the name of the excavation company, a name of a property owner or party contracting the excavation company to perform the excavation, etc.). The one-call center sends the ticket to one or more underground facility owners 140 and/or one or more locate service providers 130 (who may be acting as contracted agents of the facility owners) so that they can conduct a locate and marking operation to verify a presence or absence of the underground facilities in the dig area. For example, in some instances, a given underground facility owner 140 may operate its own fleet of locate technicians (e.g., locate technician 145), in which case the one-call center 120 may send the ticket to the underground facility owner 140. In other instances, a given facility owner may contract with a locate service provider to receive locate request tickets and perform a locate and marking operation in response to received tickets on their behalf.
More specifically, upon receiving the locate request, a locate service provider or a facility owner (hereafter referred to as a “ticket recipient”) may dispatch a locate technician to the work site of planned excavation to determine a presence or absence of one or more underground facilities in the dig area to be excavated or otherwise disturbed. A first step for the locate technician includes utilizing an underground facility “locate device,” which is an instrument for detecting facilities that are concealed in some manner, such as cables and pipes that are located underground, to verify the presence or absence of underground facilities indicated in the locate request ticket as potentially present in the dig area (e.g., via the facility owner member codes listed in the ticket). An underground facility locate device is used to detect electromagnetic fields that are generated by a “test” signal provided along a length of a target facility to be identified. Locate devices typically include both a signal transmitter to provide the test signal (e.g., which is applied by the locate technician to a tracer wire disposed along a length of a facility), and a signal receiver which is generally a hand-held apparatus carried by the locate technician as the technician walks around the dig area to search for underground facilities. The signal receiver indicates a presence of a facility when it detects electromagnetic fields arising from the test signal. Conversely, the absence of a signal detected by the receiver of the locate device generally indicates the absence of the target facility.
Subsequently, the locate technician then generally marks the presence (and in some cases the absence) of a given underground facility in the dig area based on the various signals detected (or not detected) using the locate device. For this purpose, the locate technician conventionally utilizes a “marking device” to dispense a marking material on, for example, the surface of the ground along a detected underground facility. Marking material may be any material, substance, compound, and/or element, used or which may be used separately or in combination to mark, signify, and/or indicate. Examples of marking materials may include, but are not limited to, paint, chalk, dye, and/or iron. Marking devices, such as paint marking wands and/or paint marking wheels, provide a convenient method of dispensing marking materials onto surfaces, such as onto the surface of the ground.
In some environments, arrows, flags, darts, or other types of physical marks may be used to mark the presence or absence of an underground facility in a dig area, in addition to or as an alternative to a material applied to the ground (such as paint, chalk, dye) along the path of a detected utility. The marks resulting from any of a wide variety of materials and/or objects used to indicate a presence or absence of underground facilities generally are referred to as “locate marks.” Often, different color materials and/or physical objects may be used for locate marks, wherein different colors correspond to different utility types. For example, the American Public Works Association (APWA) has established a standardized color-coding system for utility identification for use by public agencies, utilities, contractors and various groups involved in ground excavation (e.g., red=electric power lines and cables; blue=potable water; orange=telecommunication lines; yellow=gas, oil, steam). In some cases, the technician also may provide one or more marks to indicate that no facility was found in the dig area (sometimes referred to as a “clear”).
As mentioned above, the foregoing activity of identifying and marking a presence or absence of one or more underground facilities generally is referred to for completeness as a “locate and marking operation.” However, in light of common parlance adopted in the construction industry, and/or for the sake of brevity, one or both of the respective locate and marking functions may be referred to in some instances simply as a “locate operation” or a “locate” (i.e., without making any specific reference to the marking function). Accordingly, it should be appreciated that any reference in the relevant arts to the task of a locate technician simply as a “locate operation” or a “locate” does not necessarily exclude the marking portion of the overall process.
The locate service provider 130 may handle a high volume of locate requests on a daily basis. For example, the locate service provider 130 may have locate offices (or profit centers) in different geographical regions and each locate office may have a hundred or more locate technicians in the field each day. Depending on its size, each locate office may respond to hundreds or even thousands of locate requests on a given day.
The locate service provider 130 may use one or more ticket processing systems to process incoming locate request tickets from the one-call center 120. For example, the ticket processing system may extract identifying information such as a ticket number from an incoming ticket and create a database entry for that ticket number. The database entry may be used throughout the life cycle of the ticket to keep track of pertinent information, such as the status of the ticket (e.g., whether the ticket has been dispatched to a locate technician and, if so, which locate technician).
The ticket processing system may populate the database entry with additional information retrieved from the ticket. For example, if the ticket includes an address for a corresponding work site, the ticket processing system may store the address in an appropriate field in the database entry.